Why You Should Never Accept Advice

So there's literally no time until NaNoWriMo begins, and I'm beginning to sweat it. There is just enough time for last minute planning and research, but I've got other things to do too. The beauty of NaNoWriMo is that you don't have all the time in the world to complete it. Except I do, if I want it, because I have a time machine. But I choose not to use it, because it's (a) very dangerous (b) removes the fun from everything and (c) it may have just short circuited and burnt away some of my hair.

Anyway, this week I decided to get into the spirit of things and follow some NaNoWriMo advice: Tell everyone what you're doing, because it'll make you feel more accountable and let others know what's going on.

I was fool enough to follow this advice. Needless to say, it's probably the way I interpreted it, but oh well. It was Chris Baty who wrote the advice! Attack him!

So I spent the majority of my time conversing with folk telling them about my story, what it was for and just how brilliant it was to be taking part. Then I made the mistake of telling certain friends.

After detailing the plot line to them, they immediately asked me to incorporate them into my story. Since I don't really like one of them, I decided on the spot to have him as a poor little soldier boy who gets completely owned in every way by a big, muscled guy with a small army's worth of weapons on him. The other got turned into a scared, petite woman who performed a very, very painful, involountary and basically cruel surgery. Then more people arrived, and I closed my borders.

That hasn't been my only problem. On Wednesday of last week (not this week, I'd have to have a time machine to be able to do that - or rather, a working specimen of one) I told my guitar teacher, who we shall now refer to as M, my whole plotline. She was almost violently sick and started laughing in a nervous, jittery kind of way. Then she asked me to never get into government. Pff.

So I think I haven't actually made anything better by following Chris Baty's advice. All I've done is scare some folk and bring a horde of I-want-a-part-in-your-novel people down on myself. So now I'm annoyed with NaNoWriMo for granting me bad advice.

Ah, NaNoWrimo. You never know when it's going to be one of those days when it turns around and eats you, or if it's going to be one of those days when it simply eats anyone around you.

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Look out for my novel! I'll be starting it tomorrow, but bear in mind that this is my first NaNo. Nobody email me asking to be a part of it, or I'll include you as some sort of low life form, like a dromedary camel or something similarly smelly.

I leave you all to your lives. Until later. If I never return (which isn't going to happen), just remember that I was just one of many victims of NaNoWriMo.